Use Your Old Smartphone as a Free Home Security Camera: How to Do It

What happens to your old phone when you upgrade? You can resell it or recycle it, or you can turn it into a new and usable device that still adds value to your home.

With a little time, patience, and free apps, it’s pretty easy to turn an old smartphone into a basic home security camera. It won’t be as full-featured as a professional home security camera, but it can be a quick and easy monitor for your baby’s room, hallway, garage, or home office.

All you need to turn your old smartphone into a DIY home security camera is a quick app download, a few minutes of installation, and maybe a special phone mount. We’ll break it all down to make it easy.

Reading more: 7 Places You Should Never Install a Home Security Camera

Step 1: Install a security camera app on your old smartphone

To get started, you’ll need to choose a security camera app. Most apps offer many of the same features, such as local streaming, cloud streaming, local or remote recording and storage, and motion detection and alerts. Once you’ve got everything set up, you can monitor your living space and control your security camera from anywhere, right from your new phone.

One of the best app options for setting up your phone as a security camera is Alfred. It’s cross-platform, so it doesn’t matter if your old phone has a Android phone or iPhone. And the same goes for your new phone.

Alfred is free to use and gives you a remote view of your live feed, motion detection with notifications, free cloud storage, a two-way audio feed, and use of both the front and rear cameras. To unlock additional features, such as higher resolution viewing and recording, zoom capabilities, ad removal, and 30 days of cloud storage, you can upgrade to Alfred Premium.

1. Download Alfred (Android, iOS) on both your old and new phone. You don’t have to use your phone as a monitoring tool — you can also download Alfred to your tablet or PC if you’d rather monitor from there. Just make sure you have the app on both devices.

2. On the new phone, swipe through the introduction and tap Start. Select viewer and tap Next.

3. Once you are on the login page, click Sign in with Google (requires a Google account) and sign in with your Google account details.

4. On the old phone, repeat the same steps, but instead of selecting viewerselect CameraMake sure you are signed in with the same Google account.

Once both phones are logged into Alfred, you’re pretty much done with the setup. Alfred has simplified the camera options down to just a few settings. On iOS, you can only enable motion detection, choose between the front and rear cameras, and toggle audio on or off. If you’re using an Android device, you have those options, plus you can also enable continuous focus, have Alfred automatically reopen when the phone reboots, set a resolution, and enable a passcode lock.

From your new phone you can still change a few settings, such as turning notifications on or off, setting a camera or viewer name, adding other people to your Circle of Trust (give other people access to your video feeds), remove a camera, check how many times a camera is disconnected, set the sensitivity for motion detection, and enable a low-light filter on cameras.

If Alfred doesn’t quite do it for you, you can also explore other cam app options. Other apps that can give your old phone a security camera upgrade include:

• Facet: Faceter is a monitoring app that provides quick installation and cloud storage for Apple and Android phones.
• Epoccam: EpocCam is a very fast cam app that is made for content creators, but can serve a wide variety of purposes. It is currently only made for iPhones.
• iVCam from E2ESoft:iVCam is a more open-source cam solution that is best suited for people who really want to experiment with and customize camera settings. However, like EpocCam, it focuses more on webcam-related activities than security.

Step 2: Choose a spot for your new smartphone security camera

After you have started streaming, you will need to set up and position the camera. You may want to point it at the front entrance of your home, your backyard, the place where you keep valuables, or a point that you think is particularly vulnerable. You can also set up an IP camera as a baby monitor.

If you have several old phones lying around, you can install multiple cameras on them to get a reasonably good video recording.

Step 3: Mount and connect your security camera smartphone

To mount or position the camera, a small smartphone tripod or suction cup car mount can do wonders and help you position the camera in an inconspicuous place. To increase the field of view, consider using a wide angle lens for your phonesomething that can be purchased online for between $5 and $20.

Streaming video is very power intensive and the phone will be on 24/7. To avoid the phone running out of battery within the first few hours, you should place it close to a power source. A 10-foot Micro USB or Lightning cable gives you more flexibility in where you place it.

And that’s it: now you can use the security camera app on your new phone to view the footage from your old phone’s camera. You’ve made your home safer without spending a lot of money.

Final Note: Old Smartphones and Security Concerns

Smartphones eventually become too old for security updates, which means they can eventually become vulnerable to attacks. If your old phone is still online, like when you’re using it as a security camera, that’s a problem.

First, we recommend wiping all personal data off the phone before turning it into a camera. Second, automate your updates if possible. Third, consider giving the phone an expiration date after which you recycle it. These days, companies try to push security updates 5-7 years after release (lately it’s been leaning more toward 7 years). We have a full guide that discusses this issue if you want to learn more.

If we’ve got you excited about using your smartphone for home security, don’t forget that you can also download an app like Hidden camera detector to automatically look for telltale signs that a camera is watching in the room. Airbnb may have banned indoor security cameras, but we don’t blame you if you still want to check when you’re traveling.

For more information, see Six Quick Tips to Get the Most Out of Your Home Security Camera and the best diy home security systems.